Mr. Fox

MY DAUGHTER THE RACIST

One morning my daughter woke up and said all in a rush, “Mother, I swear before you and God that from today onwards I am racist.” She’s eight years old. She chopped all her hair off two months ago because she wanted to go around with the local boys and they wouldn’t have her with her long hair. Now she looks like one of them: eyes dazed from looking directly at the sun, teeth shining white in her sunburnt face. She laughs a lot. She plays. “Look at her playing,” my mother says. “Playing in the rubble of what used to be our great country.” My mother exaggerates as often as she can. I’m sure she would like nothing more than to be part of a Greek tragedy. She wouldn’t even want a large part, she’d be perfectly content with a chorus role, warning that fate is coming to make havoc of all things. My mother is a fine woman, allover wrinkles and she always has a clean handkerchief somewhere about her person, but I don’t know what she’s talking about with her rubble this, rubble that — we live in a village, and it’s not bad here. Not peaceful but not bad. In cities it’s worse. In the city centre, where we used to live, a bomb took my husband and turned his face to blood. I was lucky, another widow told me, that there was something left so that I could know of his passing. But I was ungrateful. I spat at that widow. I spat at her in her sorrow. That’s sin. I know that’s sin. But half my life was gone, and it wasn’t easy to look at what was left.

Anyway, the village. I live with my husband’s mother, whom I now call my mother, because I can’t return to the one who gave birth to me. It isn’t done. I belong with my husband’s mother until someone else claims me. And that will never happen, because I don’t wish it.

The village is hushed. People observe the phases of the moon. In the city I felt the moon but hardly ever remembered to look for it. The only thing that disturbs us here in the village is the foreign soldiers. Soldiers, soldiers, soldiers, patrolling. They fight us and they try to tell us, in our own language, that they’re freeing us. Maybe, maybe not. I look through the dusty window (I can never get it clean; the desert is our neighbour) and I see soldiers every day. They think someone dangerous is running secret messages through here; that’s what I’ve heard. What worries me more is the young people of the village. They stand and watch the soldiers. And the soldiers don’t like it, and the soldiers point their guns, especially at the young men. They won’t bother with the women and girls, unless the woman or the girl has an especially wild look in her eyes. I think there are two reasons the soldiers don’t like the young men watching them. The first reason is that the soldiers know they are ugly in their boots and fatigues; they are perfectly aware that their presence spoils everything around them. The second reason is the nature of the watching — the boys and the men around here watch with a very great hatred, so great that it feels as if action must follow. I feel that sometimes, just walking past them — when I block their view of the soldiers these boys quiver with impatience.

And that girl of mine has really begun to stare at the soldiers, too, even though I slap her hard when I catch her doing that. Who knows what’s going to happen? These soldiers are scared. They might shoot someone. Noura next door says, “If they could be so evil as to shoot children then it’s in God’s hands. Anyway, I don’t believe that they could do it.”

But I know that such things can be. My husband was a university professor. He spoke several languages, and he gave me books to read, and he read news from other countries and told me what’s possible. He should’ve been afraid of the world, should’ve stayed inside with the doors locked and the blinds drawn, but he didn’t do that, he went out. Our daughter is just like him. She is part of his immortality. I told him, when I was still carrying her, that that’s what I want, that that’s how I love him. I had always dreaded and feared pregnancy, for all the usual reasons that girls who daydream more than they live fear pregnancy. My body, with its pain and mess and hunger — if I could have bribed it to go away, I would have. Then I married my man, and I held fast to him. And my brain, the brain that had told me I would never bear a child for any man, no matter how nice he was, that brain began to tell me something else. Provided the world continues to exist, provided conditions remain favourable, or at least tolerable, our child will have a child, and that child will have a child, and so on, and with all those children of children come the inevitability that glimpses of my husband will resurface, in their features, in the way they use their bodies, a fearless swinging of the arms as they walk. Centuries from now some quality of a man’s gaze, smile, voice, or way of standing or sitting will please someone else in a way that they aren’t completely aware of, will be loved very hard for just a moment, without enquiry into where it came from. I ignore the women who say that my daughter does things that a girl shouldn’t do, and when I want to keep her near me, I let her go. But not too far; I don’t let her go too far from me.

The soldiers remind me of boys from here sometimes. The way our boys used to be. Especially when you catch them with their helmets off, three or four of them sitting on a wall at lunchtime, trying to enjoy their sandwiches and the sun but really too restless for both. Then you see the rifles beside their knapsacks and you remember that they aren’t our boys.

“Mother. . did you hear me? I said that I am now a racist.”

I was getting my daughter ready for school. She can’t tie knots, but she loves her shoelaces to make extravagant bows.

“Racist against whom, my daughter?”

“Racist against soldiers.”

“Soldiers aren’t a race.”

“Soldiers aren’t a race,” she mimicked. “Soldiers aren’t a race.”

“What do you want me to say?”

She didn’t have an answer, so she just went off in a big gang with her school friends. And I worried, because my daughter has always seen soldiers — in her lifetime she hasn’t known a time or place when the cedars stood against the blue sky without khaki canvas or crackling radio signals in the way.

An hour or so later Bilal came to visit. A great honour, I’m sure, a visit from that troublesome Bilal, who had done nothing but pester me since the day I came to this village. He sat down with us, and mother served him tea.

“Three times I have asked this daughter of yours to be my wife,” Bilal said to my mother. He shook a finger at her. As for me, it was as if I wasn’t there. “First wife,” he continued. “Not even second or third — first wife.”

“Don’t be angry, son,” my mother murmured. “She’s not ready. Only a shameless woman could be ready so soon after what happened.”

“True, true,” Bilal agreed. A fly landed just above my top lip, and I let it walk.

“Rather than ask a fourth time I will kidnap her. . ”

“Ah, don’t do that, son. Don’t take the light of an old woman’s eyes,” my mother murmured, and she fed him honey cake. Bilal laughed from his belly, and the fly fled. “I was only joking.”

The third time Bilal asked my mother for my hand in marriage I thought I was going to have to do it after all. But my daughter said I wasn’t allowed. I asked her why. Because his face is fat and his eyes are tiny? Because he chews with his mouth open?

“He has a tyrannical moustache,” my daughter said. “It would be impossible to live with.” I’m proud of her vocabulary. But it’s starting to look as if I think I’m too good for Bilal, who owns more cattle than any other man for miles around and could give my mother, daughter, and me everything we might reasonably expect from this life.

Please, God. You know I don’t seek worldly things (apart from shoes). If you want me to marry again, so be it. But please — not Bilal. After the love that I have had. .

My daughter came home for her lunch. After prayers we shared some cold karkedeh, two straws in a drinking glass, and she told me what she was learning, which wasn’t much. My mother was there, too, rattling her prayer beads and listening indulgently. She made faces when she thought my daughter talked too much. Then we heard the soldiers coming past as usual, and we went and looked at them through the window. I thought we’d make fun of them a bit, as usual. But my daughter ran out of the front door and into the path of the army truck, yelling, “You! You bloody soldiers!” Luckily the truck’s wheels crawled along the road, and the body of the truck itself was slumped on one side, resigned to myriad potholes. Still, it was a very big truck, and my daughter is a very small girl.

I was out after her before I knew what I was doing, shouting her name. It’s a good name — we chose a name that would grow with her, but she seemed determined not to make it to adulthood. I tried to trip her up, but she was too nimble for me. Everyone around was looking on from windows and the open gates of courtyards. The truck rolled to a stop. Someone inside it yelled, “Move, kid. We’ve got stuff to do.”

I tried to pull my daughter out of the way, but she wasn’t having any of it. My hands being empty, I wrung them. My daughter began to pelt the soldier’s vehicle with stones from her pockets. Her pockets were very deep that afternoon; her arms lashed the air like whips. Stone after stone bounced off metal and rattled glass, and I grabbed at her and she screamed, “This is my country! Get out of here!”

The people of the village began to applaud her. “Yes,” they cried out, from their seats in the audience, and they clapped. I tried again to seize her arm and failed again. The truck’s engine revved up, and I opened my arms as wide as they would go, inviting everyone to witness. Now I was screaming, too: “So you dare? You really dare?”

And there we were, mother and daughter, causing problems for the soldiers together.

Finally a scrawny soldier came out of the vehicle without his gun. He was the scrawniest fighting man I’ve ever seen — he was barely there, just a piece of wire, really. He walked towards my daughter, who had run out of stones. He stretched out a long arm, offering her chewing gum, and she swore at him, and I swore at her for swearing. He stopped about thirty centimetres away from us and said to my daughter, “You’re brave.”

My daughter put her hands on her hips and glared up at him.

“We’re leaving tomorrow,” the scrawny soldier told her.

Whispers and shouts: The soldiers are leaving tomorrow!

A soldier inside the truck yelled out, “Yeah, but more are coming to take our place,” and everyone piped low. My daughter reached for a stone that hadn’t fallen far. Who is this girl? Four feet tall and fighting something she knows nothing about. Even if I explained it to her, she wouldn’t get it. I don’t get it myself.

“Can I shake your hand?” the scrawny soldier asked her, before her hand met the stone. I thought my girl would refuse, but she said yes. “You’re okay,” she told him. “You came out to face me.”

“Her English is good,” the coward from within the truck remarked.

“I speak to her in English every day,” I called out. “So she can tell people like you what she thinks.”

We stepped aside then, my daughter and I, and let them continue their patrol.

My mother didn’t like what had happened. But didn’t you see everyone clapping for us, my daughter asked. So what, my mother said. People clap at anything. Some people even clap when they’re on an aeroplane and it lands. That was something my husband had told us from his travels — I hadn’t thought she’d remember.

My daughter became a celebrity amongst the children, and from what I saw, she used it for good, bringing the shunned ones into the inner circle and laughing at all their jokes.

The following week a foreigner dressed like one of our men knocked at my mother’s door. It was late afternoon, turning to dusk. People sat looking out onto the street, talking about everything as they took their tea. Our people really know how to discuss a matter from head to toe; it is our gift, and such conversation on a balmy evening can be sweeter than sugar. Now they were talking about the foreigner who was at our door. I answered it myself. My daughter was at my side, and we recognised the man at once; it was the scrawny soldier. He looked itchy and uncomfortable in his djellaba, and he wasn’t wearing his kaffiyeh at all correctly — his hair was showing.

“What a clown,” my daughter said, and from her seat on the cushioned floor my mother vowed that clown or no clown, he couldn’t enter her house.

“Welcome,” I said to him. It was all I could think of to say. See a guest, bid him welcome. It’s who we are. Or maybe it’s just who I am.

“I’m not here to cause trouble,” the scrawny soldier said. He was looking to the north, south, east, and west so quickly and repeatedly that for some seconds his head was just a blur. “I’m completely off-duty. In fact, I’ve been on leave since last week. I’m just — I just thought I’d stick around for a little while. I thought I might have met a worthy adversary — this young lady here, I mean.” He indicated my daughter, who chewed her lip and couldn’t stop herself from looking pleased.

“What is he saying?” my mother demanded.

“I’ll just — go away, then,” the soldier said. He seemed to be dying several thousand deaths at once.

“He’d like some tea. . ” my daughter told my mother.

“We’ll just have a cup or two,” I added, and we took the tea out onto the veranda, and drank it under the eyes of God and the entire neighbourhood. The neighbourhood was annoyed. Very annoyed, and it listened closely to everything that was said. The soldier didn’t seem to notice. He and my daughter were getting along famously. I didn’t catch what exactly they were talking about, I just poured the tea and made sure my hand was steady. I’m not doing anything wrong, I told myself. I’m not doing anything wrong.

The scrawny soldier asked if I would tell him my name. “No,” I said. “You have no right to use it.” He told me his name, but I pretended he hadn’t spoken. To cheer him up, my daughter told him her name, and he said, “That’s great. A really, really good name. I might use it myself one day.”

“You can’t — it’s a girl’s name,” my daughter replied, her nostrils flared with scorn.

“Ugh,” said the soldier. “I meant for my daughter. . ”

He shouldn’t have spoken about his unborn daughter out there in front of everyone, with his eyes and his voice full of hope and laughter. I can guarantee that some woman in the shadows was cursing the daughter he wanted to have. Even as he spoke someone was saying, May that girl be born withered for the grief people like you have caused us.

“Ugh,” said my daughter.

I began to follow the conversation better. The scrawny soldier told my daughter that he understood why the boys lined the roads with anger. “Inside my head I call them the children of Hamelin.”

“The what?” my daughter asked.

“The who?” I asked.

“I guess all I mean is that they’re paying the price for something they didn’t do.”

And then he told us the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, because we hadn’t heard it before. We had nightmares that night, all three of us — my mother, my daughter, and I. My mother hadn’t even heard the story, so I don’t know why she joined in. But somehow it was nice that she did.

On his second visit the scrawny soldier began to tell my daughter that there were foreign soldiers in his country, too, but that they were much more difficult to spot because they didn’t wear uniforms and some of them didn’t even seem foreign. They seemed like ordinary citizens, the sons and daughters of shopkeepers and dentists and restaurant owners and big businessmen. “That’s the most dangerous kind of soldier. The longer those ones live amongst us, the more they hate us, and everything we do disgusts them. . These are people we go to school with, ride the subway with — we watch the same movies, root for the same baseball teams. They’ll never be with us, though. We’ve been judged, and they’ll always be against us. Always.”

He’d wasted his breath, because almost as soon as he began with all that I put my hands over my daughter’s ears. She protested loudly, but I kept them there. “What you’re talking about is a different matter,” I said. “It doesn’t explain or excuse your being here. Not to this child. And don’t say ‘always’ to her. You have to think harder or just leave it alone and say sorry.”

He didn’t argue, but he didn’t apologise. He felt he’d spoken the truth, so he didn’t need to argue or apologise.

Later in the evening I asked my daughter if she was still racist against soldiers, and she said loftily, “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re referring to.” When she’s a bit older I’m going to ask her about that little outburst, what made her come out with such words in the first place. And I’m sure she’ll make up something that makes her seem cleverer and more sensitive than she really was.

We were expecting our scrawny soldier again the following afternoon, my daughter and I. My daughter’s friends had dropped her. Even the ones she had helped find favour with the other children forgot that their new position was due to her and urged the others to leave her out of everything. The women I knew snubbed me at market, but I didn’t need them. My daughter and I told each other that everyone would come round once they understood that what we were doing was innocent. In fact we were confident that we could convince our soldier of his wrongdoing and send him back to his country to begin life anew as an architect. He’d confessed a love of our minarets. He could take the image of our village home with him and make marvels of it.

Noura waited until our mothers, mine and hers, were busy gossiping at her house, then came to tell me that the men were discussing how best to deal with me. I was washing clothes in the bathtub and I almost fell in.

My crime was that I had insulted Bilal with my brazen pursuit of this soldier. .

“Noura! This soldier — he’s just a boy! He can hardly coax his beard to grow. How could you believe—”

“I’m not saying I believe it. I’m just saying you must stop this kind of socializing. And behave impeccably from now on. I mean — angelically.”

Three months before I had come to the village, Noura told me, there had been a young widow who talked back all the time and looked haughtily at the men. A few of them got fed up, and they took her out to the desert and beat her severely. She survived, but once they’d finished with her she couldn’t see out of her own eyes or talk out of her own lips. The women didn’t like to mention such a matter, but Noura was mentioning it now because she wanted me to be careful.

“I see,” I said. “You’re saying they can do this to me?”

“Don’t smile; they can do it. You know they can do it! You know that with those soldiers here our men are twice as fiery. Six or seven of them will even gather to kick a stray dog for stealing food. . ”

“Yes, I saw that yesterday. Fiery, you call it. Did they bring this woman out of her home at night or in the morning, Noura? Did they drag her by her hair?”

Noura averted her eyes because I was asking her why she had let it happen and she didn’t want to answer.

“You’re not thinking clearly. Not only can they do this to you but they can take your daughter from you first, and put her somewhere she would never again see the light of day. Better that than have her grow up like her mother. Can’t you see that that’s how it would go? I’m telling you this as a friend, a true friend. . My husband doesn’t want me to talk to you anymore. He says your ideas are wicked and bizarre.”

I didn’t ask Noura what her husband could possibly know about my ideas. Instead I said, “You know me a little. Do you find my ideas wicked and bizarre?”

Noura hurried to the door. “Yes. I do. I think your husband spoilt you. He gave you illusions. . You feel too free. We are not free.”

I drew my nails down my palm, down then back up the other way, deep and hard. I thought about what Noura had told me. I didn’t think for very long. I had no choice — I couldn’t afford another visit from him. I wrote him a letter. I wonder if I’ll ever get a chance to take back all that I wrote in that letter; it was hideous from beginning to end. Human beings shouldn’t say such things to each other. I put the letter into an unsealed envelope and found a local boy who knew where the scrawny soldier lived. Doubtless Bilal read the letter before the soldier did, because by evening everyone but my daughter knew what I had done. My daughter waited for the soldier until it was fully dark, and I waited with her, pretending that I was still expecting our friend. There was a song she wanted to sing to him. I asked her to sing it to me instead, but she said I wouldn’t appreciate it. When we went inside at last, my daughter asked me if the soldier could have gone home without telling us. He probably hated good-byes.

“He said he would come. . I hope he’s all right. . ” my daughter fretted.

“He’s gone home to build minarets.”

“With matchsticks, probably.”

And we were both very sad.

My daughter didn’t smile for six days. On the seventh she said she couldn’t go to school.

“You have to go to school,” I told her. “How else will you get your friends back again?”

“What if I can’t?” she wailed. “What if I can’t get them back again?”

“Do you really think you won’t get them back again?”

“Oh, you don’t even care that our friend is gone. Mothers have no feelings and are enemies of progress.”

(I really wonder who my daughter has been talking to lately. Someone with a sense of humour very like her father’s. . )

I tickled the sole of her foot until she shouted.

“Let this enemy of progress tell you something,” I said. “I’m never sad when a friend goes far away, because whichever city or country that friend goes to, they turn the place friendly. They turn a suspicious-looking name on the map into a place where a welcome can be found. Maybe the friend will talk about you sometimes, to other friends that live around him, and then that’s almost as good as being there yourself. You’re in several places at once! In fact, my daughter, I would even go so far as to say that the farther away your friends are, and the more spread out they are, the better your chances of going safely through the world. . ”

“Ugh,” my daughter said.

I’ve grown a beard or two in my time. Long, full, Mosesin-the-wilderness — that type of beard. Mainly as a way to relax, hiding my face so I can take it easy behind my beard. A while ago I went to London, to see a play they’d cooked up out of one of my favourite novels — I couldn’t wait the eight months it would take to cross the Atlantic. And in the weeks leading up to the visit I must have just quietly left shaving out of my mornings, so quietly I didn’t notice I was doing it, because when I got to London the beard was so bushy it distracted me from the sights. Big Ben and my beard. Buckingham Palace and my beard. The Tower of London and my beard. Caw, caw, said the ravens. (Were they making reference to the beard?) I had a great time. No one bothered me that entire trip. Funny to do something and then realise the reason for it afterwards — I’d grown the beard so that no one would bother me. Time to start another beard. If only I could remember how long it took for the last one to grow.

I want to be on my own for a spell. But there’s nowhere I can be on my own. I went to the library in town, thinking, It’s such a nice Saturday, so fine out, no one will be there — but it was full of bespectacled girls “studying.” The bluestockings of today. Dressed up just to go to the library, making eyes at a fellow across a room, bold as anything. I like to look, but I don’t like it when they look back. All you’re doing is taking an appreciative moment, maybe two or three, if she’s a serious matter, and she’s staring back and thinking, I’ve caught his eye. Good. Now what I’d really like to do is keep it until his dying day. It’s some kind of God-awful whim she has. This isn’t just talk; I know this type of girl, the type who looks back. I know her all too well. She’s the type who’s really trying to start something. Rousing at the beginning, the heated command, until you realise she can’t get enough attention, and she needs all of yours, every last scrap of it. And then come the ugly scenes. And I don’t mean confrontations but hissed exchanges, half hours of being kept waiting for her in some lobby or other for no good reason, parties where she bestows one freezing-cold glance upon you and then spends the rest of the evening holed up in some cosy corner with someone else; that kind of scene fixes the equivalent of a jeweller’s loupe to your eye. You examine your diamond and find her edges blurred with tawdry cracks; stay involved for a few more months and you’ll find she worsens over time. Rapidly, too. All these tactical attempts at mind control; I’m not kidding. It sounds like an exaggeration until someone tries it on you. It’s hard to find a woman without tactics. That’ll be why I made one up. Then she started a game, had me pursue her through Africa. She cast me as a desperate spinster with an antique sword. She cast me as a fellow who ditched his woman out in some foreign country because he couldn’t handle her. Mary Foxe has been taking more than a few liberties. So I’ll correct my statement. It’s hard to even imagine a woman without tactics.

When the third pretty bluestocking made eyes at me, I left. Libraries always make me feel covered in ink, anyway. Ink on my clothes, ink in my eyes. Terrible. All the body heat in there is bound to make the pages mushy. My parents met in a library. My mother was a junior librarian, and my father’s books were always overdue. He asked my mother’s best friend what her favourite books were, and he took them out, one by one—La Dame aux Camélias. Thérèse Raquin. Madame Bovary. Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Anna Karenina. He couldn’t make head nor tail of them—“Hasty women,” he told me, shaking his head. “Hasty women.” But he told my mother how much he enjoyed them, and when he got around to asking whether she objected to his calling on her at her family home some Sunday afternoon to continue their discussion, she didn’t say no.

I thought briefly about going to see my mother, in her tiny apartment two hours’ drive away, but I know she doesn’t want to see me, and I know it’s not because of anything I’ve done or failed to do. She doesn’t want to see anyone. She’s happy like that, I think. Always relieved at the end of a visit. I think she’s too old to want to talk anymore; she doesn’t mind listening, but she’s got a radio set for that. She’s still in good health; she’s still got her wits about her. She had a lot more to say for herself before my father passed away, but then he was a fine man, great company — really great company, actually — let you have your opinions and talked about his own in a way that never put your nose out of joint. And now that he’s gone she’d rather not talk to anyone else. Solitary people, these book lovers. I think it’s swell that there are people you don’t have to worry about when you don’t see them for a long time, you don’t have to wonder what they do, how they’re getting along with themselves. You just know that they’re all right, and probably doing something they like. Last time I saw my mother she kept nodding and saying, “Everything’s just fine, dear. Everything’s just fine.” This was before I’d even made an opening remark — she was in such a hurry to get her part of the conversation out of the way. If I went to see my mother, what would I tell her, anyway?

I drove around instead, just drove around, trying to decide where to stop. As I drove I tried to think of a word, a single word to sum up the way Daphne’s been behaving lately. Inscrutable. The woman has become inscrutable.

Take yesterday morning. Daphne was right outside my study, watering the flowers in the window box, warbling to herself — a pretty little racket, and I was somehow enjoying it and getting a little work done at the same time. Then suddenly she stopped and said, “Well, St. John. . You know what Ralph Waldo Emerson says. . ”

I waited quietly, held my pen still to show I was paying attention, braced myself for some cloying scrap of verse she’d just remembered from her high school yearbook. But she didn’t finish her sentence. Nor did she continue with the singing. So I said, “Go on, D., I’m all ears.”

She made a little moue with her mouth, blowing a couple of stray curls out of her line of vision so that I felt the full force of her stare. “What do you mean, ‘Go on’? I don’t know what Emerson says.”

“Oh, you don’t?” I asked, and I laughed. She didn’t laugh with me.

“You know what Emerson says, St. John. That’s why I said, ‘You know what Emerson says.’ ”

Her sleeves were rolled up, and her voice kept going from flat to sharp. I got the distinct impression that she was steaming mad at me for failing to supply her with an Emerson quotation.

“Can I ask — would you mind telling me — where you got this idea that I know what Emerson says? Have I ever mentioned in passing that I know what Emerson says?”

She yawned at me. “Come on, St. John. Don’t be shy. Tell me something Emerson said.”

I dropped my smile.

“Did someone tell you that Emerson’s a great friend of mine? Did the ghost of Ralph Waldo Emerson call one day when I was out and leave a message for me—Well, now, Fox, my boy, you know what I always say?”

“I really think you ought to know what Emerson says, that’s all,” she returned, without batting an eyelid.

I stood up and went to the window. When I got close to her she looked down at her watering can. “Mrs. Fox,” I said. “You’re a horror today.”

To which she replied, “Why don’t you write a book about it?”

Why don’t you write a book about it?

Why don’t you—

Speechless, I gestured for her to stand away from the window; then I closed it. We looked at each other through the glass — she had this cool, triumphant smile on. She really felt she’d said something extraordinarily cutting. God knows what I looked like. Then she moved on to the next window box. What the hell am I supposed to make of a conversation like that?

Then there was the picnic D. and I went to last weekend — neither of us wanted to go, but my publisher was hosting, and it seemed necessary to show my face. Some of the women had brought their little kids along to run around in the meadow, singing their nonsensical songs and making daisy chains. There was this one girl with a pair of angel wings on — she actually had quite a lot going for her. She could whistle around two fingers, and she showed some of the little boys how to skim stones off the stream, and she didn’t scream when water splashed her. I wouldn’t mind having a kid if she turned out to be like that. Daphne was watching her, too, and scowling. At one point the girl with the angel wings bumped into Daphne and said sorry real sweetly. Daphne just ignored her, looked straight ahead, tight-lipped. I told the child there was no harm done, but if I could have gotten a million miles away real fast, I would have. Then my publisher’s wife, a new mother, offered to let Daphne hold her little boy, and Daphne looked at me with these eyes of mute suffering, as if asking, Do I have to? Do I really, really have to?

I don’t know what’s got into her. Well, I guess I do, but it doesn’t justify—

On the other hand, it was presumptuous of Ellen Balfour to think that every woman in the world wants to hold a three-month-old baby just as soon as she catches sight of one. Daphne’s right, it was presumptuous. Daphne held the kid, her arms really stiff, as if he could roll out of her arms and bounce off the grass and she wouldn’t care. I chucked the boy under the chin a couple of times, and said he was a little prince, and he cried his head off. Then Daphne gave him back to his mother. Mrs. Balfour seemed to think Daphne was just overcome with delight and kept saying, “Oh, bless you, bless you. You’ll get one of your own soon, Daphne — may I call you Daphne?” English manners.

Daphne whispered to me, “That’s the ugliest child I ever saw.”

“Bad stock,” I whispered back, less because I actually thought so and more because I’ve been thinking that Daphne and I should be allies; I want us to be allies even when she’s misbehaving. I got a laugh out of her, anyway. Nothing’s even happened to us yet — we haven’t had a broke spell yet, or watched each other lose people, lose our looks, face down sickness. But D. seems to be holding out on me, refusing to go all the way into this thing unless there’s a child, too. Once I think my way past a lot of stuff that hasn’t got anything to do with anything, the thought of being called “Dad” doesn’t give me the jumps — well, not as severely as it used to. I didn’t used to think about these things. I must be getting older. Daphne could be onto something, but I won’t be hustled into it.

The other day I went on an urgent mission to retrieve my wallet from a jacket pocket before D. sent our stuff out to be cleaned. D. had left a book on top of the laundry basket: Happy Husband, that was the title. And underneath, in smaller letters: Make him happy, keep him happy! An advice manual. I took it away, read a few pages, chased them down with a couple of despairing drinks. There are real books all around the house, everywhere. She could pick one up and in mere seconds she could be involved in something that makes her laugh and feel nervous and hot and cold and forgive the world its absurdity — Pushkin, maybe, or Céline. Instead she’s spending her time reading up on what to do about me. It got me down. The book itself was useless, too. All the advice it offered about the timing of meals and affecting a cheerful disposition and trying to take an interest in the husband’s doings even when they’re fearfully boring and never saying “I told you so”—these aren’t the reasons a person looks with favour upon another person, these aren’t the reasons someone stays in love. I put the book back before she knew I’d seen it. If I said anything about it she’d tell me I was taking it too seriously, that she was just looking at it for amusement.

As for Mary, I’d been trying to get her to show up, but she wouldn’t. I don’t know what that means. Am I drying up? My book about the killer accountant is going as well as it can be, considering that I hardly know what I’m writing; I’m just jogging along behind the plot like a carthorse, ready to drop it as soon as Mary shows up and it’s time to get out of here. But no sign of Mary. She could be staying away deliberately (if so, I didn’t know she could do that), or my brainpower’s getting weak. Maybe once I’m alone in my beard things will be the way they used to be with her — friendly, I mean. I wrote her name in the steam on my bathroom mirror, as a kind of invocation, and after a couple of slow minutes I added a middle name for her. A kind of incentive, a step towards reality, bait. I wrote Jane. A good, plain, sensible name. Mary Jane Foxe, I wrote. Before my eyes the letters changed; the name grew longer. “Aurelia.” Mary Aurelia Foxe. This is what it’s come to.

I pulled up outside a bar I’d been to a couple of times. I knew I could be kind of alone there, especially during the day, when the social drinkers are waiting for the clock to strike a respectable hour before they start. There were a few guys inside, spaced well apart, one of them sitting at a corner table. He was groaning into his hat, but no one else in there even looked at him. I took another corner table, set down my scotch, lit my pipe, opened my copy of Metamorphoses, and pretended to read. The other guys started giving me the eye then, including the one who was wailing into his hat. “Gentlemen,” I said, from behind the cover of my book, “it’s a free country.” That had no effect, so I told the bartender to get them drinks, on me — there were only five of them in total. They left me in peace once they got their drinks.

It was quiet until a bunch of youngsters swept in and started yelling their orders all over the place. I raised my eyes from the line I’d been staring at for the past fifteen minutes or so and watched them. They used long words and called each other by nicknames that alluded to the classical world. Castor was present, and Pollux, and Patroclus and Achilles. College men, in town for the weekend. Three of them had a muttered dispute amongst themselves before heading over to where I sat. They drew out chairs, turned them around, and sat on them. Usually it annoys me when people do that, but I wanted to know what they had to say. They asked me if I was S. J. Fox, and I said, Yup. They named a few of my books and said they liked them. I said, Thanks. They called their friends over and announced my name. Looking round at the faces, I could tell that some of them had no idea who I was, but they did an impressive job of pretending that wasn’t the case. There’s something to be said for good breeding. You get hypocrites out of it, but you get the odd respectful youngster, too. They called me sir, and boss, and wouldn’t hear of me buying my own drinks. I put my book aside and answered their questions as well as I could. These boys all had names like Toby and Jed — their real names, that is. They didn’t try to get me to call them by their Greek names. They reminded me of Daphne’s set, kids who had never been poor and never would be, spouting cheerfully lopsided theories. Men of the world who didn’t live in the world — not properly. Me, I’m a farmer’s son. These boys reckoned the Europeans were about to get into a scrap over Czechoslovakia, and that there’d be war again, and we’d be in it again. They wanted to know what I thought about that. I reminded them that Germany had had its balls cut off — land taken, no army to speak of, no money — there wasn’t going to be any war. I told them they weren’t going to have to do what I did, that if they were looking for glory they’d better find another way. “I hope you’re right, Mr. Fox,” Jed said earnestly — or was it Toby? Blue sweatshirts and ears that stuck out. “I hope you’re right, but I don’t think you are. Things are really boiling over — the Germans are saying all kinds of things, and France and England are running around trying to get promises—”

“Didn’t you hear? We aren’t promising anything. Roosevelt said we’re staying neutral. What’s Czechoslovakia got to do with us?”

Toby — or Jed — stared at me. “What’s Czechoslovakia got to do with us? Well, what’s independence got to do with us? Liberty? The pursuit of happiness?”

All I could think of were a couple of lines someone else had recited to me a long time ago, in France: To goodness and wisdom we only make promises; pain we obey. That’s Proust, y’know, the guy had told me. (Daphne should have said to me, “You know what Proust says. . ” If she had, that little exchange of ours wouldn’t have happened, or would have happened differently, maybe, would have ended without me having to shut the window in her face.) The boys went quiet, which means I’d said the lines aloud. They were all squinting at me, as if I was some figure in a fading photograph and each of them was vying to be the first to identify me. A pox on the young. I left without saying good-bye, just walked out.

I heard voices as I headed from my driveway to the front porch. Daphne and a man. She was laughing. She sounded drunk. It was only three o’clock. I slowed my steps with a corner still to turn; hedges, luckily, so they couldn’t see me. I heard the porch swing creak — the two of them were sitting on it. It was John Pizarsky she was with, and they were talking about fairy tales, of all things. D. had a pair of scissors, and a vaseful of water, and was arranging some flowers — whether she’d bought them or he’d given them to her, I was sure the flower arranging was unnecessary — she always did it, stem by stem, even when presented with a bunch of flowers that already looked all right.

“Why have husbands got to keep themselves all locked up, that’s what I want to know,” Daphne complained.

“Not all of them do,” Pizarsky told her. He wasn’t drunk at all. I didn’t like that — those two sat together, his voice measured and sober, and her saying just anything that occurred to her. He was going to remember the entire conversation, and she would remember a quarter of it at the very most. Unfortunate.

“Oh, it’s only the cold ones that do it, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know about cold, Daphne. . ”

“No, you don’t know about cold. Because you’re not cold, are you, J.P.?”

He didn’t answer. Too busy trying to think of some phrase that would make her see him as ardent, I’ll bet.

“You’re not Bluebeard? Or Reynardine?” I caught flashes of Daphne through the brambles; she was examining her arrangement of the flowers from a number of angles. She didn’t ask his advice, and I was glad she didn’t. She always asked my advice — not that I ever give a response she can make use of.

“Nor Fitcher, no.”

“Fitcher?”

Just what I was wondering. Pizarsky seemed to know his stuff, though. He’d told me himself that he’d been studying for a doctorate in anthropology until his father had demanded he help steer the family’s jewellery business. A diamond mine in Africa and a gold mine in Nevada. Opal fields in Australia, and more. I don’t like to think about how rich Pizarsky is. He doesn’t seem to like thinking about it, either. It’s awkward that he has so much. What’s left for him to want?

He told my wife a bizarre story. It started out almost too screwed up to even be a fairy tale. It was all about a magician called Fitcher who went around with a basket, begging for food. And any woman who pitied him and gave him food was compelled to jump into his basket and go home with him and be his wife.

“Yes,” Daphne said, laying down her scissors. “I felt so sorry for him at first. . All I wanted to do was make him happy. . ”

“Yes, well, Fitcher did this with three sisters in a row. He set each of them the don’t-look-in-the-locked-room test — the first two sisters failed, of course. The only way for Fitcher’s final wife, the third sister, to survive her danger was by becoming insane. If you think about it, it was inevitable. That woman went through a lot. She found her sisters all chopped up and sunk in blood, and she collected the parts and she joined them up. Only a very, very young child would think of a solution like that, and only an insane person would actually try it. It worked, though; they came back to life, and she sent them home. On a clear afternoon in an empty house she covered herself in honey and rolled around in a barrel’s worth of feathers, and a skeleton sat by in a chair the whole time; it was meant to take her place, and she didn’t hesitate or falter because she’d gone nuts. She was scared right out of her mind. She had to be — to rescue herself. So she quit working to make sense of things — we don’t always realise it, but it’s hard work we do almost every waking moment, building our thoughts and memories and actions around time, things that happened yesterday, and things that are happening right now, and what’s coming tomorrow, layering all of that simultaneously and holding it in balance. She cut it out and just kept moving. She was nobody, she was nowhere, doing nothing, but doing it as hard and fast as she could. And once she was fully covered with honey and feathers she walked out into broad daylight and used the only words she hadn’t forgotten: I’m a bird; I’m Fitcher’s bird. If she’d ever been anyone other than Fitcher’s bird, she didn’t know a thing about it. What did she look like, all sticky with quills? What did her eyes say? Did she even understand the words she was saying? Never mind; her mouth said: I’m a bird, I’m Fitcher’s bird. And nobody who heard her could doubt her. She met the bad magician; she met Fitcher himself, on her way home. I’m a bird, she told him. He didn’t recognize her. I mean, she was gone. He looked into her eyes and there was no woman there. And he never caught her again.”

Daphne must have had a look on her face that made him stop talking. Neither of them said anything for quite a while.

“She went insane because of him,” Daphne said. “I think that’s happening to me.”

The swing creaked again. I looked out from behind the hedge; I had to see what they were doing. If they saw me, they saw me. But if I saw that he had his arms around her, or even just his hand on her arm, I was going to bust his head open. The conversation itself didn’t matter. She was drunk. And he — I knew what he was doing with apparent idleness: using his halting, mysterious European accent to feed her a story that he knew she’d like because she could place herself in it, be the victim, be the heroine. I withdrew before either of them saw me.

“You don’t have to go insane,” Pizarsky told Daphne. “It doesn’t have to go like that.”

“What shall I do, then? What shall I do?” She didn’t sound as if she was especially interested in the answer to her question.

Her arms were bare and freckled, her eyes were closed, her head was resting against the back of the swing. Mine. I wanted to lift her up into my arms and carry her around with me, our bodies together, my neck her neck, her hands my hands. He wasn’t touching her, he wasn’t even sitting close to her, and I could see only the back of his head. But he was very still, hardly seemed to be breathing, and he was looking at her. That was bad.

“Daphne — what’s going on?” he asked eventually. “What’s wrong?”

“I wish I could tell you,” she said.

“You can. You can tell me anything.” He waited, but she didn’t say anything. “Maybe some other time. I think you should know, though, that there are other ways — apart from going crazy. Do you know the story of Mr. Fox?”

“No.” Her voice was languid, reluctant. “What happens in that one?”

“The usual — wooing, seduction, then the discovery of a chopped-up predecessor. But this is an English fairy tale, you see. So the heroine, Lady Mary—”

“Lady Mary?” Daphne asked. I didn’t need to look to know that she’d sat up.

Mary Foxe put a soft hand on my shoulder. “Come away, Mr. Fox,” she whispered. I shrugged her off. She was wearing what Daphne called her signature scent. I disapproved — and not just because the scent costs enough per ounce for me to momentarily consider asking the shopgirl to leave the price tag on so Daphne can realise how spoilt she is. Mary was Mary; she’s been with me a long time — maybe even before I’d gone to France. She’s handled a sickle at haymaking time, stacked and tromped the hay, helped me feed it to the cows and horses. She’s stood dressed top to toe in mud, and she’s braced herself against the barn beams when she’s been too tired to stand. Mary Foxe shouldn’t have anything to do with bottled fragrances.

“That farm stuff was before my time,” Mary said. “Come away with me, Mr. Fox.” There was a hard smile on her face. “You said that Mrs. Fox couldn’t stop us, remember?”

Suddenly I was getting to be a little tired of Mary Foxe.

“Drop it,” I said to her. “Just be quiet. In fact — you can’t speak. You’ve just lost your voice, Mary. You’re real hoarse today.” And I closed her voice up in my hand.

Mary’s lips shaped words, a fast and furious stream of them, but none of them sounded. She clasped her throat, horrified. She’d been forgetting who was boss.

Undo this, she mimed, furiously.

In time, I mimed back.

But the damage was done. I’d addressed her too loudly; Daphne and Pizarsky had heard me, and they’d stopped talking. I couldn’t stay where I was a second longer. I strode round the corner and stepped up onto the porch, car key dangling from my hand. “Hi, there, D. Afternoon, Pizarsky. Thanks for bringing her home. Had a nice time at—?”

“The Wainwrights’,” they supplied quickly. Oh, sure. The Wainwrights’.

Daphne got up and went into the house without kissing Pizarsky good-bye. It bugged me that she didn’t kiss him good-bye, as if now even a simple kiss on the cheek could mean something between them. Pizarsky’s leave-taking was good, quiet, neither hurried nor labored — good in that I didn’t really even have to say anything to him, or look his way. I thought that if our eyes met I’d have to take a swing at him.

Daphne went upstairs but not into our room. She went into one of the spare bedrooms and put her flowers on the bedside table. I followed her in; the predominant smell was mothballs. We haven’t had an overnight guest for a long time.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi,” Daphne said. She fluffed the pillows, pushed all the blankets onto the floor, and jumped onto the bed.

“Like the flowers?” She flung out an arm in their direction.

“They’re okay,” I said.

“First prize for this afternoon’s croquet. Pizarsky won them, but he doesn’t care about flowers, so he let me have them.”

“Good of him.”

“I’m hot,” she said. “Could you bring me some ice?”

“Just ice?”

“Just ice. .”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Look at it. Feel cool. God, St. John. Does it matter what I do with the ice?”

“I’ll get it in a second. What’s going on? Why are you taking a nap in here? Don’t you like your bed anymore?”

“Oh — don’t let’s fight,” she said. My right hand was still closed up tight, to keep Mary quiet, and Daphne looked at that hand for a couple of seconds, then at my face. I guess she thought I was making a fist at her.

I wanted to ask her if she meant to spend the night here as well, but I didn’t want her to say yes. It could be that she was in some kind of mood and just wanted a nap and my question might force her to adopt a stance. She does that, I’ve noticed; she lashes out when she thinks she’s been given a cue.

“Is it okay if I host a luncheon for some underprivileged inner-city girls next Wednesday? Not too many, five or so.”

“Fine by me. Got your underprivileged inner-city-girl bait? Want me to drive you down to the city so you can catch them?”

“Be serious. I want to join Bea Wainwright’s Culture Club, and the luncheon is kind of an audition for me.”

“That’s fine. Just don’t let them into my study. I mean it — that’s off-limits.”

“Of course.”

She stood up before I could go and get that ice she’d asked for. “I’ll get it myself, okay?” She went up on her tiptoes and kissed my forehead. Quite sadly, I thought.

On my study desk I found a brand-new notebook open on my desk, neatly placed in the centre. There was a list written on the first page. I looked at the list for a minute or two. Points in favour of “D.” and “M.” It was almost my handwriting, so close that for a second it seemed to me that I’d made the list and forgotten about it. But I hadn’t written it. These weren’t even thoughts I recognised.

So Mary was writing things down now.

I looked up and she was laughing. Soundlessly, of course. She was even more appealing as a mute. Like an image my eye was chasing through one of those flip books — she wasn’t moving, I was. I beckoned her.

“You wrote this,” I said. Mary came closer, gesturing helplessly towards her mouth.

“Just nod or shake your head,” I said. “You wrote this, didn’t you?”

She folded her arms.

“Did Daphne see this?”

No visible response. I closed the notebook and laid my fist on top of it. It was starting to ache, vaguely, but with a throbbing that promised to get stronger.

“This is childish, Mary. Don’t do anything like this again.”

She curtseyed wickedly, and left me.

I tore the list out of the notebook and ripped it to shreds — I needed both hands for that. Even if Daphne had found the list and taken any notice of it, she must know that I couldn’t write a thing like this in earnest and leave it somewhere she’d find it. But Daphne knew something, or thought she knew something. That tiny kiss on my forehead — why had she given me that? It stayed with me unbearably, like ashes at the start of Lent, the slap on the hand I got whenever I went to brush them away as a kid.

I must have been twenty-five years old when I realised Christ never came back from the dead. Some people would say it wasn’t a big deal, it was just that I wised up. But I’m talking about something I’d always believed until then. I damn near knocked myself flat with these new thoughts. I mean, the resurrection could be true — it could be, I wasn’t there, so I can’t say for sure. But it probably isn’t true. So that means Christ was killed and that was the end for him. He’d gotten mixed up with some pretty intense people in his lifetime, though, and those people thought he was too important to let go. And they made themselves important with this idea that their friend couldn’t be killed, told everyone all about it. And hundreds died because they believed Christ couldn’t be killed, and thousands more suffered, I mean, the martyrs, think of all the martyrs, and — I was walking down a street in Salzburg, eating an apple, when these thoughts came to me, and I just kept right on chewing and swallowing, chewing and swallowing, since it was something to do.

Love. I’m not capable of it, can’t even approach it from the side, let alone head-on. Nor am I alone in this — everyone is like this, the liars. Singing songs and painting pictures and telling each other stories about love and its mysteries and its marvelous properties, myths to keep morale up — maybe one day it’ll materialize. But I can say it ten times a day, a hundred times, “I love you,” to anyone and anything, to a woman, to a pair of pruning shears. I’ve said it without meaning it at all, taken love’s name in vain and gone dismally unpunished. Love will never be real, or if it is, it has no power. No power. There’s only covetousness, and if what we covet can’t be won with gentle words — and often it can’t — then there is force. Those boys at the bar downtown, coming round talking idly about more ideas to die for. Something terrible’s coming, and everyone in the world is working to bring it on. They won’t rest until they’ve brought it on. Mary, come back — distract me. No, stay away, you’re the problem.